Sunday, May 26, 2024

Image Credits: Darrell Etherington with files from Getty under license

Turns out the seemingly triumphant launch of OpenAI's latest model included an embarrassing misstep — earlier this week, the company took down one of ChatGPT's new voices, Sky, for sounding suspiciously similar to the digital assistant voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the movie "Her."

OpenAI insisted that the voice belonged to a different actress and was not intended to imitate Johansson's, but Johansson didn't buy it. She said the company's CEO, Sam Altman, had actually approached her about using her voice and she declined. Johansson hired lawyers to seek "resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation." (Also kind of a giveaway: Altman tweeted "her" after the launch.)

This all came on the heels of a different OpenAI controversy — the company had created a "superalignment" team to develop ways to govern a superintelligent AI, but several of those team members resigned after disagreements about the company's leadership and priorities.

Read on to see what TechCrunch has been covering this weekend.

Weekend news and opinion

Image Credits: PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP

Signal's Meredith Whittaker discusses Telegram dispute: Mike Butcher interviewed Meredith Whittaker, president of the secure messaging app Signal, covering topics like a recent controversy around Telegram's security versus Signal's ("we have created the gold standard encryption technology") and the aforementioned OpenAI shenanigans ("the culture is dorm room high jinks"). Read more

Synapse collapse threatens fintech industry: Mary Ann Azevedo examines the bankruptcy of a16z-backed banking-as-a-service company Synapse. The company had hoped to sell its assets, but any potential deal appears to have fallen apart, leaving the fintech companies that worked with Synapse in the lurch, along with their individual customers. Read more

These companies aren't going public in 2024: While this year is looking to be better than 2023 for tech startups going public, there's still a number of high-profile companies that seem likely to wait a bit longer, based on recent funding or executives' statements. Rebecca Szkutak rounds them up. Read more

Meet more notable women in AI: Dominic-Madori Davis and Kyle Wiggers continue their interviews with the smartest women working in AI, including researcher Chinasa T. Okolo, AI Now managing director Sarah Myers West, and EqualAI CEO Miriam Vogel.

What else we're reading

Image Credits: Getty Images / PM Images

Nicole Shanahan, who independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced as his running mate, has complex ties to the tech world. The New York Times' story examining those ties can seem a bit tawdry, covering the end of Shanahan's marriage to Google co-founder Sergey Brin and a supposedly illicit encounter with Elon Musk. But I think it's worth getting a glimpse of this largely hidden side of Silicon Valley. Read more

Meanwhile, The New Yorker offers a comprehensive look at allegations that Netflix's hit reality show "Love Is Blind" is a toxic workplace. Read more